Forget the sanitised 1961 film with Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly and Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi – this Richard Greenberg stage adaptation sticks far more closely to the nucleus of Truman Capote’s novel. It’s briskly directed by Nicolai Foster with a clever set by Matthew Wright, whose costumes allow for a number of rapid changes.

Matt Barber as struggling writer Fred, perched in an attic bedsitter carved out of a decaying brownstone mansion, gives a fine performance of a young man finding his feet in the Big City while discovering that actual jobs as well as literary patronage come with a price tag. Holly is Georgia May Foote, hurling through her lines with the same speed as the girl she portrays whisks from one potential (and wealthy) suitor to another. She singings “Moon River” charmingly.

It’s a production well endowed with character studies, sketched in with a lightning and blistering pen. Robert Calvert’s Doc, who comes to New York to retrieve his long-vanished bride, Melanie La Barrie and Katy Allen as a brace of fading poseuses, Andrew Joshi as Yunioshi and Charlie de Melo as Brazialian playboy with presidential aspirations are are excellent.

Put a live animal in any live show – play, musical, opera or ballet – and a British audience can be guaanteed to focus attention on it. Here we have the most laid-back of white longhaired cats, Bob, who takes it all in his stide or, more accurately, eye-commanding meander acoss the stage. He really should have taken a curtain-call.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s runs as the Theatre Royal, Norwich until 19 Devember with matinées on 16 and 19 November.